People

Why I Teach

Bio 44Y, a Stanford biology class developed by Associate Professor Tadashi Fukami that involves undergraduates in their instructors’ research, has been awarded the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI). This combination of inquiry-based instruction and faculty research has been shown to engage students much more effectively than standard lab classes.

“The students come to realize that science is a trial-and-error process,” says Fukami, “that it’s okay to have failure. They just have to keep working with the data and reformulate their questions.”